Moving into our new Elephants & Bees Research Centre

Posted on March 3, 2014 at 8:49 am

Blog by International Intern, Tara Easter

As I write this post I am sitting on a couch, in an office, with desks, electricity, shelves, and SPACE… That’s right; we have officially moved in to the Elephants and Bees Research Center! It is so exciting to have a defined work space, a place to slump and to have our little 3m x 4m kitchen return to being just a kitchen.

Photo: Our Elephants and Bees Project Office with local field assistants Nzumu and Emmanuel

But more importantly than our own comfort, we can finally start using the center as it’s meant to be used. We had our first official meeting last week with all of our beehive fence farmers. They are, after all, where the Elephants and Bees Project began, and they are why we have this research and community center now. We wanted to make sure they knew that this is a place to call their own – to have meetings, borrow equipment, learn about the environment, process honey, and do whatever else the center may be a host for.

Photo: Beehives donated to the project from The Future for Nature auction event in the Netherlands

We also discussed the purpose of our research at the center: to make their lives a bit easier. We will all learn together how to improve the beehive fences, get more bee occupations, produce more honey, and help each other out with any problems along the way.

Photo: Lucy training the beehive fence farmers in the new honey processing room

We look forward to finishing off the final touches (gutters still to be fixed!) and to moving in more furniture. Grateful thanks must go to The Rufford Foundation, The St Andrews Prize for the Environment, Save the Elephantsand Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund for support and finances to build this centre for our project work and farmers.